Sleep Is Overrated Or Is It?

I really have to wonder why our bodies are designed to need so much sleep.  If you believe in creationism, you can just put it off to the fact that there wasn't as much to do when the world was created, so Adam and Eve could sleep as much as they wanted to, when they weren't too busy stealing forbidden fruit.  However, if you believe in evolution, there is no reason for us to need so much sleep, we should have evolved into non sleeping creatures by now.

I have had a lot of time to wonder about that and many other things when I'm NOT sleeping at night.

No matter how I look at it, how much I think about it or how much I try, I don't get anywhere near enough sleep.  If I am REALLY lucky, I am in bed by 10:00 pm.  And given that I am up at 5:00 am for work everyday, that's a grand total of seven hours.  But that much sleep is a rarity.  For starters, most nights it is closer to 11:00 pm before I manage to get myself into bed, bringing it down to  six hours.  

Six hours if I fall asleep instantly and sleep continuously until the alarm goes off.

And what are the chances of that, you wonder?  NIL!  Lately, falling asleep is an almost impossible task.  I have no idea why because I am constant ALL the time.  Most of the time, I feel like I could lay down on the floor and be asleep in moments, but not at night when I go to bed.  As soon as the lights go out and my head hits the pillow, my brain comes alive.  I can't stop thinking about things - sometimes important things, but mostly about trivial things.  Things that don't matter, things that I wouldn't waste a second of time thinking about during the day, things that really shouldn't be keeping me up at night.  But no matter what I do or how hard I try, the thoughts won't go away.  It is just one random piece of nonsense after another until I am ready to scream.  

I toss and turn and toss some more and curse to myself as I stare at the dark ceiling begging sleep to come.

Amongst the random thoughts I always (literally every night) have the urge to write when I should be sleeping.  I can sit and stare at a blank WORD document on my computer screen for hours without being able to compose a coherent paragraph.  Yet, when I should be sleeping, give me a notebook and a pencil because I NEED to write!  I actually have ideas and concise thoughts that seem to be missing when I am actually trying to write.  I don't understand why my brain works like this and I really don't like it.  I am beginning to think that the "writer" part of my brain hates me.  Or maybe it is just trying to tell me that my writing sucks and I should just give up on it.  Whatever it is, I need it to stop!

I need to find a way to make the thoughts stop so that I can sleep before I go completely insane.*  it is times like this when I really wish I had a sleep option, just like my computer, so that with a click of a mouse, I could be in dreamland.  

* see, another reason to get those insane asylums up and running again!